Alleged Sports Arson at Africa's Biggest Football Tournament — Global Issues
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Jul 30 (IPS) – After the recent Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournament in Ivory Coast, a continent-wide campaign has emerged on social media challenging the main sponsor of the tournament, TotalEnergies, for its involvement in a crude oil pipeline in East Africa. EACOP).
EACOP, a massive 1,443 kilometer crude oil export pipeline, is designed to transport oil from oil fields in Western Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. TotalEnergies, the main stakeholders in the project, will extract oil from the Tilenga field and export it to the Global North.
Environmentalists say the project threatens the lives of tens of thousands of people and the fragile environment of the region. The governments of Uganda and Tanzania have dismissed these concerns, saying that the pipeline is important to strengthen their economies.
Many of these campaigners, especially environmentalists, have faced harassment and imprisonment.
One of them, Stephen Kwikiriza, an employee of a Ugandan non-profit organization, the Environmental Governance Institute (EGI), was reportedly kidnapped and beaten by Ugandan soldiers in Kampala on June 4, 2024.
After being questioned, he was dumped hundreds of kilometers from the capital, highlighting the latest episode in Uganda's environmental blockade campaign.
TotalEnergies, through their press officer, François Sinecan, has categorically denied that the company was involved in the abuse of environmentalists, or was involved in securing the company with funding.
Sports laundry
Critics say TotalEnergies is exploiting Uganda and Tanzania for their oil, as it faces multiple legal battles over its role in the climate crisis and its refusal to be held accountable.
They are concerned that TotalEnergies is using AFCON, the continent's biggest soccer tournament, and its global audience to boost its reputation while profiting from climate-destroying fossil fuel drilling across Africa.
“Afcon is one of the ways they use to make them legal. They have to use the sports field. They seem to be saying, 'Look at what we are doing in Africa, and in your communities, it benefits you.' Every time you look at the TotalEnergies logo, you can be sure that this is a big company worth investing in, when in fact, it is destroying our existence,” Nkurunziza Alphonse, Uganda Coordinator of Students Against EACOP Uganda, told IPS. .
Alphonse was arrested in October 2022 when he led a group of students to the EU embassy in Kampala to deliver a petition against EACOP. But he is not the only student who has been arrested and tortured in recent times.
On December 15 last year, Bwete Abdul Aziiz, the founder of Justice Movement Uganda and a student of Kyambogo University in Kampala, gathered 50 students, including members of this movement, to protest and submit a petition to the Ugandan parliament EACOP.
However, the students did not reach their destination as the police dispersed the protest and arrested Abdul Aziiz, along with three other students who are members of the movement.
“Before we were taken to the Central Police Station in Kampala, where we stayed for four days, we were detained in a fenced area for about an hour where the police threatened to stop fighting the government. I was kicked in the ribs by the policeman, my colleagues were slapped,” Abdul Aziiz told IPS.
However, Sinecan, the press officer of TotalEnergies, has denied claims of sports-washing and involvement in the arrest of climate activists.
“Africa is part of the DNA of TotalEnergies, which has been present on the continent for ninety years and has never stopped developing its operations and strengthening its local roots. The company employs 10,000 men and women in more than 40 African countries, working across the energy production and distribution chain. Every day, almost four million customers visit the 4,700 service stations in the TotalEnergies network in Africa,” Sinecan told IPS.
He added that TotalEnergies “will not tolerate any threats or attacks against those who peacefully defend and promote human rights.”
“TotalEnergies has a history of engaging directly with all members of the public, including private organizations involved in human rights issues. “So far, the company's responsibilities include quarterly meetings, discussions with stakeholders, bilateral meetings, webinars on important topics identified by NGOs and answers to questions and concerns raised by all project stakeholders,” said Sinecan.
However, activists IPS spoke to disagree.
Bekhumuzi Bhebhe, Leading Campaigns Power Shift Africa, in a statement sent to IPS said, “Investing millions in the washing of games while compensating the homeless with little reveals the deep deception practiced by many French nationalities. It also highlights the apparent disconnect between corporate sponsorship and real social responsibility.”
But the French oil giant denied the claims of no compensation for the displaced homes, telling IPS that “like all other aspects of the project, TotalEnergies is strictly in compliance with local laws and international standards (IFC).”
Football and climate change
The 2023 AFCON has been postponed to 2024 due to bad weather, leading critics to say the tournament has highlighted the impact of the climate crisis, which TotalEnergies and other oil majors are largely responsible for.
Richard Heede of the Climate Accountability Project has described EACOP as a mid-range carbon bomb. The pipeline is expected to start operating in 2025 and once completed, it is expected to offset approximately 34 million tons of carbon emissions annually for approximately 25 years.
Baraka Lenga, coordinator of Greenfaith Tanzania, considers this a climate crisis.
“For capitalists and entrepreneurs, EACOP means making billions of dollars. TotalEnergies does not care about human rights but money. In Tanzania, more than 70 percent of the population depends on agriculture, but instead of worrying about the negative effects of EACOP, TotalEnergies is focused on profit,” Hang on said.
Alagoa Morris, an environmental expert and human rights activist in Nigeria, told IPS that African governments allow oil giants to exploit the continent's communities in order to maintain support from the Global North, where most of these oil companies are based. He says that this has also caused a lot of oil to be spilled in this continent.
Last year, the Nigerian government confirmed the loss of 3,000 barrels of crude oil from the TotalEnergies spill in the oil-rich Niger-Delta region, which has become one of the most polluted areas in the world due to frequent oil spills.
“African governments are complicit in the exploitation of the continent's oil because the wealth obtained from oil is then used to fuel the lust for power and wealth of a few people, which perpetuates the cycle of corruption and environmental destruction,” said Morris.
Renewable Energy?
To phase out fossil fuels by mid-century, world leaders during cop28 held in the UAE last year, pledged to continue investing in renewable energy. However, with a projected population of 2.5 billion by 2050, many African leaders doubt that renewable energy can replace the fossil fuel energy needed to power Africa's rapidly growing population.
It is funmi Adebotean expert on environmental policy in Nigeria, believes that Africa must embrace renewable energy but according to him, “many countries on the continent do not have the infrastructure to transition to renewable energy over time.”
Despite allegations of investing in fossil fuels, TotalEnergies told IPS that it has “committed USD 5 billion to renewable and low-carbon energy and will commit another USD 5 billion by 2024. This is the second year in a row that TotalEnergies has invested more in it. low-carbon energy than new hydrocarbon projects.
“From 2020, we are firmly committed to our transformation strategy, based on two pillars: gas and electricity. Gas and low carbon electricity are the backbone of the future energy system. Gas is an important transitional energy to support the rise of intermittent renewable energy and to replace coal in electricity generation. In terms of energy, we are already one of the largest developers of solar and wind energy in the world, which should put us in the top five in the world in this sector by 2030.”
Victory in Vision
The fate of EACOP is uncertain after several financial institutions, including former backers of TotalEnergies, announced that they would no longer postpone the project due to global environmental protests.
European lawmakers have also criticized it and called for its delay.
For Uganda-based Alphonse, this marks an important victory in the fight against EACOP, as a lack of funding could lead to the project being suspended.
“This is the time for African countries to get rid of fossil fuels. Oil is destroying our continent,” he said.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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